U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Evidence of more incompetence and cowardice has been exposed from the Parkland school shooting. Seventeen students and staff were murdered on February 14, 2018, at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School. I will not name the murderer.

You have probably read and remember the armed school resource officer, Deputy Scot Petterson, failed to confront the killer immediately. He did not run to the sound of the gunfire. Instead, he waited outside the school for others to come. Eventually, there were seven or eight deputies outside the school waiting. Officers from another jurisdiction showed up and immediately entered, but it was too late. All the killing was complete. The murderer had fled the scene.

Wikipedia says the murderer was carrying a “duffle bag” and a backpack. That is incorrect. The murderer was carrying a black rifle case, not a duffle bag.

The murderer was carrying a black rifle case, not a duffle bag.

It is a critical distinction, because Andrew Medina, a school security monitor, recognized the rifle case.

Andrew Medina stated the murderer was carrying a rifle bag, and he recognized it as such. He said this in a recorded interview, under oath, shortly after the shooting.

He was the first person recorded to see the murderer enter campus. He stated that he had been previously briefed; that the murderer was the most likely student to “shoot up the school” and that he recognized him.

As soon as Cruz began walking “like on a mission” toward the building, Medina followed and began frantically texting fellow security guards. “We had a meeting about him last year and we said if there's gonna be anybody whose gonna come to this school and shoot this school up, it's going to be that kid,” Medina told detectives on the day of the Feb. 14 shooting.

Medina stated that when the murderer had been enrolled at the school, they were “always watching him”:

“Just crazy,” Medina recalled of Cruz during the teen's time at Parkland. “And we always was [sic] watching him, you know. Like, it was one of those kids that we always kept an eye on.”

What was the point of being briefed on the threat, recognizing him, and then doing nothing to stop him?

Medina called another unarmed security monitor. That monitor hid in a closet during the shooting. This lack of action is an obvious point of failure of the system. If Medina had confronted the murderer, he might have been able to stop him from entering the school. At the minimum, he would have disrupted the murderer's plan and created a delay until armed police.

Medina recognized him as a threat. He realized he was carrying a rifle case. The murderer was forbidden from being on the school campus. A rifle in a rifle case is not an immediate threat until it is removed from the case. The murderer did not appear to be armed with other weapons. Medina did nothing to stop him. He never shouted at him or called for him to stop.

Medina is said, after the shooting started or a minute after the murderer entered the school, to have driven to the front of the school (on his utility vehicle) to get Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, and Sheriff's deputy. Medina said he took Peterson back to where the murderer entered the school.

That is where Peterson stayed, calling backup, and waiting.

There were many opportunities to stop or reduce the carnage the Parkland school shooting.

Activist school officials worked with the sheriff's office to ensure that minority students, such as the murderer, were not arrested, to prevent them from having a criminal record. The program was heralded a great success by the Obama administration. That program was used to shield the murderer from arrest.

The murderer was never committed as a danger to self and others, in spite of numerous incidents and problems. Therefore, he was never included as a prohibited possessor of firearms.

Andrew Medina, the unarmed school “security,” was placed in the security monitor position, as part of actions taken for discipline in a sexual harassment case. There appears to be a pattern here. The security program was not taken seriously by school officials. It seems to have been treated as a dumping ground for “problem” employees.

In government bureaucracy, it is challenging to get rid of incompetent people, especially if they are in one of the affirmative action protected groups. In places such as Democrat-controlled school districts, those groups contain most of the people in the bureaucracy. Only straight, white, non-Hispanic, men are outside of some special protected status.

When firing people is extremely difficult, managers find places to put incompetents where they can do the least damage. It appears that “school security” was such a place in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school bureaucracy. In high-stress situations, people fall to the level of their training. They seldom react better than their training.

What was Andrew Medina trained to do? It appears he was instructed to watch.

Watch gates, watch students. He was very reluctant to sound a warning. He knew how expensive sounding false alarms were. I suspect Andrew Medina did what he had been trained to do, which was to watch and report to others.

He had an excellent opportunity to stop a tragedy. He recognized the danger. He understood the potential of the rifle case. He did not act. He watched. He called others. It appears he was a problem. It may be the school management did not want him to interact with others.

Andrew Medina has faults. He has responsibility for some of the blame in the horrific mass murder that followed his failure to act. Though most of the blame for his inaction lies with the administration that put him in his position, and the training or lack of training they gave him. In the long, long tradition of bureaucracies, the administrators will work very hard to keep from accepting any blame. They will work hard to shift the blame to others. It is a significant function of bureaucracies to shift blame from the bureaucracy to other people.

Gun owners, Second Amendment Supporters and the NRA are favorite targets of the blame shifting. It fits the narrative Progressives sell: individuals are not responsible for their actions, society is.

But none of the restrictions called for on gun owners, Second Amendment supporters, or the NRA would have stopped this mass murder.

Better training and a strong sense of individual responsibility could have stopped it, at multiple points. Andrew Medina's recognition of the threat and lack of action is now a classic example of that failure.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He guided the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30-year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

We are seeing the continuing break down of our society. Thanks to schools like Parkland, we are turning our young people without any real knowledge of the formation of our country and without a scintilla of patriotism. This is where the crux of the situation lies. Useless oxygen-consumers like Medina are the norm in our population today. With the help of our “public education system” and the mainstream media, the upcoming generation is totally unprepared to lead and at the same time imbued with the idea that their lives can be ” made good” with government programs using money that comes from a fountain!

talk about a coward!!!! all he had to do is sound an alarm,that’s it!! this asshole was put there because of a sexual harassment charge??? he should have been fired,what is it with this county?? oh,that’s right,it’s ran by communist,i mean democrats.

I wonder if Mendina can sleep at night knowing that a lot of kids won’t be able to experience life because of he and the Broward County cowards, Patterson in particular. I would rather have went toward the fire than to have to live with inaction and cowardness afterwards.

The evidence for a conspiracy continues to mount. I don’t usually bust out the tin foil hat, but there is just too much wrong with this whole incident. If true, it speaks of the depth that anti-gun forces will stoop, even the sacrifice of innocent children.

MB, I got the email of your post, but can’t find it here. Many politicians are criminals and should be in prison. The school administrators and their security might not be legally liable, but they should be. The first one that saw him enter property could have intervened before the man took out his firearm and began killing – he knew he was carrying a rifle bag, knew he was not allowed on the property, and knew he was dangerous.

He might also not have any legal requirement as a private citizen, but as a security guard, paid to keep the children safe, he failed in his duties to those children. That seems to be criminally negligent, since it was his job to ensure those children were safe. The same goes for the school administrators, they created procedures that resulted in those children being murdered.

They might not be legally liable, and hide behind that, but how they can sleep at night after failing so immensely, is difficult for a reasonable person to imagine.

There is no legal requirement to intervene in a crime in progress or potential crime. Even a failure to render aid law would likely not withstand jury scrutiny in this case. You can’t charge someone with being a horrible human being, if that was the case, 90% on politicians would be in prison for life. Being grossly negligent would require someone to enable the killer, gross negligence would not be cowering behind a pole. And the “security monitor” probably did the only thing he could do, seek an armed police officer, who unfortunately just happened to be a coward.

Agreed. Given the amount of control that civilian monitors have over police behavior these days, a mere parking lot monitor would probably face a firing squad for ratting out a teenage boy and causing all kinds of mayhem and distraction at the school. I’ll bet the parking lot monitor was either not trained or instructed, if he suspected something amiss, to simply notify the “proper authorities” … in this case a bunch of incompetent, chicken sh*t deputies and an equally incompetent sheriff.

I wonder if Monitor Medina and the useless Police Department will ever face any charges for their complete failure to engage the shooter at Parkland, much the same with the Demo-Rats in D.C. all kinds of charges but none in JAIL???

Amazing, the guy knew who it was, knows he’s carrying a rifle bag and hides ,the local cops all wait outside ,the first cops to enter the school were from a different jurisdiction !?! It really doesn’t add up.

It does add up! We have a distinct problem in this country with people ASSUMING that cops are good people and that they are in law enforcement “to Protect and Serve”. We assume they are good people because some of them are our friends or family and we can’t imagine otherwise. We assume the same thing about military veterans (of which I am one). The problem is that it is ignorance to assume that. The majority of people who “serve” in law enforcement and the military are no better than any other individual and they aren’t going to do any more than their job entails ESPECIALLY if it means possible death! (Why do you think that out of tens thousands of individuals in those jobs, very few are ever recognized for a truly heroic action?). Likewise they have “orders/limitations” dictated to them and will not violate those orders because of fear of retaliation by their “masters”, government! These chicken-shit cops/deputies did exactly what most average citizens would do. This isn’t the first time it happened and won’t be the last either! And don’t forget, a huge number of these people are leftists who aren’t interested in risking life and limb for anyone but themselves!

You say: “The majority of people who “serve” in law enforcement and the military are no better than any other individual and they aren’t going to do any more than their job entails ESPECIALLY if it means possible death! ”

I’m not entirely sure which branch of the military you “served” in, but I did 27 years and witnessed the most remarkable, unafraid, and brave actions of my shipmates. I will assume that you only speak for yourself and not the hundreds of thousands of good military men and women who don’t share your cowardice.

@farmer – Really? So just where do you think you’re going to hide on a “boat”? A crew on a ship really doesn’t have a choice but to DO THEIR JOB – you’re nothing but a captive audience! You can talk all the shit you want, I was in Special Forces for 22 years, and I’ve seen it all – every branch. I’ve been in situations that would have made you cry like a 2 yr old and pee your panties, far more “demanding” than being aboard ship (which I’ve been on also, both above the waterline and below!). Show me all of the stories where cops did something heroic, and you’ll be showing cops buying diapers for a single mother or giving a coat to a homeless guy, but NOT running into a firefight to save an innocent from a gang fight, and definitely not running in to take out a teenager hellbent on killing former classmates. It’s rare whether you want to admit it or not!!!

Broward County officials should ALL be proud of their non-actions! It’s a democratic county filled with what democrats do best, talk, talk, talk and blame, blame, blame. These people actually tried VERY hard to shift the blame from themselves to the NRA and other gun owners with NO PROOF. Andrew Medina is a cowards coward because he let young kids die. The administration is also at fault for not providing him ANY training to deal with the situation. You know the old saying, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, when needed the most, do NOTHING!”

I wonder if slaughter was not the desired result, just to give the anti gun brigades something more to scream about? This would fit with socialist dogma, that innocents must be sacrificed to advance the agenda.

that meme also fits well with the VERY evident “instant response”, with a sophisitated website, mass protests, instant media “coverage”, select nationial gun grabbers staged and responding wihtin minutes, media instantly singing the same sing in four part harmony, and the selected “survivors”, one of whom was past high school age, had graduated from a school in California, and was not even AT the campus to “survive” anything but the four mile bike ride he had to get there. It is all too convenient that his parents are FBI and similar folks……. not to mention the near instant organisation of “demonstrations” across the nation, chartered busses to bring the “spokespersons” “from the school” to spew their canned and implanted talking points, NONE of which would or could have mattered in the slightest. Ban hi cap mags.. except that he used ten rounders. Ban assault weapons, except that, as noted in this article, he never should have been allowed to BUY any firearms. Ban bump stocks, except that one was not used. AND never mind ALL weapons are alraedy banned from such a school campus, and the kid KNEW it.

Nah, this reeked of political theatre from the beginning. FBI had been “handling” the punk for quite some time, ALL school and LE staff knew the kid and his rotten reputation, he SHOULD have been in jail, or at least under indictment for any or all of the four felony level CRIMES he had already committed. Had anyone had the stones to ACT on any of those incidents, he’d never have been able to GET that weapon let alone be able to move about freely in public to bring it to the school. At the least he’d have an anklet tracking and announcing his whereabouts.

No, this one goes far too deep and wide to be just a crazed kid acting out on his own. Broward COunty needs turned inside out… remember the recent election fraud going on there, under the “able supervision” of one Snipes?

How difficult would it be for a Democrat operative to select an already troubled youth and “NUDGE” him toward the desired tragic action?? Government has studied mind control and manipulation for decades. Each of the mass shooters appear to be troubled individuals prior to the shooting. Dems appear to be instaneously on the spot post shooting….ie Wasserman-Shultz, and the activists…almost before the police.

A good piece of criticism. It echoes my frustrations with the vast majority of these shootings. We’re definitely on the same page, although I fully agree with the accusations leveled against “liberals/democrats” in this and other cases, I don’t see many instances of conservatives or republican jurisdictions better handling such situations. The wait and watch doctrine is pretty pervasive. It’s been an enormous frustration to me since seeing the first videos of columbine, to the images of officers taking cover behind squad cars aiming shotguns in the general direction of the Las Vegas shooter who was hopelessly beyond their effective range (while in reality they were likely well beyond his effective range as well). I realize that there are some decent reasons to wait for backup, or a specialized unit to respond, but if like in many jurisdictions every squad car carries an ar15 or 12ga, and a vest with lvl3 or lvl4 armor plates, for just such an occasion, why does it seem to be a break of protocol to act immediately?

Anyone who wishes to be armed, should be, anytime, anywhere. That said, Deputy Scot Petterson may be a coward, but so were the several other Broward County officers and chief, seems to be a systemic problem, and all those officers should be removed. “We were just following orders” is not an excuse. Too bad they were not in the Army serving under General Patton, because he most likely would have lined them up and shot them himself. 17 people died needlessly that is on their heads as well as the sick M-F who killed them. .

Not entirely. It starts at the top where the Democrat Communists sit. They were the ones that told them to stand down. If they didn’t stop them from intervening, why were ~7 cops sitting outside waiting. The blame lies solely on the Democrats just like in all Democrat controlled cities where murderers are are out of control. All they wanted was was an opportunity to launch a national anti-gun campaign using high school kids. The globalist politicians are communists. They are against our freedoms and will do anything to take them away. Including allow people to be killed so they can have some fuel for the fire. Ignorant masses fall in line like lambs to the slaughter. False flags were staged by Hitler to convince the masses to give up their rights for “their safety”. They are even telling us this the same tactic they are using today by putting this in movies. No one is listening.

Sick, just sickening. How could anyone live with him/herself knowing what he knew, when he knew it and did nothing to protect those children? This cuts to the core of the soul, one who is such a coward as to not even have any remorse for having done nothing when he could easily have stopped the killer before he began. He knew he had a rifle bag, and he knew the young man’s intent, and he knew that man should not have been on the property, nor in the school – and did nothing.

Yes, let’s pass more laws… that always works. This is so disturbing. All of those people should be facing prosecution and sued into the poor house, along with the school administrators who should also be charged with aiding and abetting, if not more serious crimes, like when a cohort is charged with murder in the commission of a crime, even when he/she didn’t actually commit the murder, but was involved in the crime in which a person died. Another sickening proof that “gun control” is pure fantasy.

Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS -2.2%) CEO Ed Stack spoke today at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council (video) on the reaction to the company’s decision to move to ban assault-style weapons and raise the gun-buying age to 21.

Stack said only 62 employees quit over the decision out of more than 40K employed by the company.

Dick’s comparable sales were down 3.9% in Q3, although analysts note that weakness in Dick’s electronics department and industry-wide soft hunting demand were major factors along with lost gun sales.